Can Confucius Save the World?

Confucius has made a comeback in China, and, scholar Daniel Bell believes it has the potential to be a beneficial force in the rest of the world. Bell’s writing on what he describes as China’s meritocracy has stirred heated debate among academic circles. Drawing on a new book Just Hierarchy: Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the World, Bell and WANG Pei argue that Confucius-inspired hierarchies can help deal with the ongoing health crisis and other modern global challenges. CKGSB Professor Wang Jianbao, meanwhile, argues that Confucian ethics can help drive great business.

Date/Time: 11am-12pm EST, 11pm-12am Beijing time

Attendees will receive a discount code for 20 percent off Bell and Wang’s new book Just Hierarchy: Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the World.

About the Speakers

Daniel A. Bell

Dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Shandong University at Qingdao and a Professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing

Daniel A. Bell（贝淡宁）is the Dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Shandong University at Qingdao and a Professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Bell is from Montreal and was educated at McGill University and Oxford University. He was founding director of the Berggruen Institute’s Center for Philosophy and Culture. His books include The China Model, China’s New Confucianism, Beyond Liberal Democracy, East Meets West, The Spirit of Cities (co-authored with Avner de-Shalit) and Just Hierarchy: Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the Rest of the World (co-authored with Wang Pei), which was just released in March. He is founding editor of the Princeton-China series. He writes frequently for leading media outlets such as the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, and his works have been translated in 23 languages. He has been interviewed in English, Chinese, and French. In 2018, he was awarded the Huilin Prize and was honored as a “Cultural Leader” by the World Economic Forum.
WANG Jianbao

Associate Researcher of the Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies of Peking University and Director of Center for the Humanities and Business Ethics of the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing

WANG Jianbao (王建宝) is Associate Researcher of the Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies of Peking University and Director of Center for the Humanities and Business Ethics of the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing.

He graduated from the Department of Philosophy Studies and Religious Studies, Peking University in 2017 and received the Doctor Degree of Philosophy, under the supervision of professor Tu Weiming. He then became Director of the Program for the Discourse on Confucian Entrepreneurs of WEIB, the World Ethics Institute, at Peking University.

Before joining the academia, Wang Jianbao has worked for twenty years as a mechanical engineer and expert on supply chain management in China and abroad.
Wang Pei

Assistant professor at The China Institute of Fudan University

Wang Pei（汪沛) is an Assistant professor at The China Institute of Fudan University. She completed her PhD thesis on phenomenology at department of philosophy of Tsinghua University, and was a joint PhD. student in Université Paris 1. She was a post-doc fellow in Tsinghua Institute of Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Science. She is the co-author (with Daniel. A. Bell) of Just Hierarchy: Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the Rest of the World, published by Princeton University Press in March 2020. She has authored academic articles in English, Chinese, and French, mainly on phenomenology, ethics, and comparative philosophy. She is currently writing a book titled The Power of Calligraphy: A Political History of Calligraphy in China.

Supporting Organizations

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department Of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

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